O STAY AND HEAR

They are walking in the flower garden, and what are they singing? Something rather merry and mocking; the veering breeze blows up a few words now and then to the ears of a lady behind green bathroom blinds.

Now the lady raises a long pale arm and applies a little soap to it, at the same time peeping through the slats without rising from her cool bath water.

Samedi après-midi, Madame-là tombait malade: Voyez, cherchait l'Abbé ...

The brown girls' arms are intertwined like snakes; yet somehow the plump hand of Melta, who is a maid by profession and fond of arranging flowers, reaches out with a sharp carving-knife and lops off half a bush of crimson roses between one stanza and another; both girls dip in a flying curtsy, and the thinner fingers of Ariadne, the eighteen-year-old cook, brush grass and come up with the dazzling spray.

Monsieur l'Abbé venait. Il dit, Rome Saeculorum. Madame-là comprend c'est 'rhum'.

But I thought they said the patois was common and that they disdained it, says this English Madame-là to herself, standing on a rush mat and dabbing off rivulets absently. To think of me, me myself, indulging in a cold bath at four o'clock in the afternoon! she comments inwardly.

When she told them about the sudden dinner, they had taken it very sweetly. "A business friend of the Master's." "Oh yes, Mistress: understood." "He is a director, but has quite a simple appetite." "Flying fish," says Ariadne. "And fried plantains," adds Melta.

"Oh no, I think not fried plantains – too hot. Something green. Perhaps a little stuffed avocado?"

"Stuffed with what, Mistress?" asks Ariadne bluntly.

"Oh, I don't know ... perhaps some parsley?"

"The hen and the weeding boy have taken the parsley," Melta says.

"Then I leave it to you."

They are pleased: they like things being left to them. They take up the carving knife and go out into the garden. But instead of hunting for a last blade of parsley or a handful of chives, they dance around in the high soft breeze, lopping off roses. Their aprons lift and swirl, and they look like ballet dancers dressed as probationer nurses: the full skirts of their uniforms are covered with a flight of multicoloured wild ducks. Their little song has come to an end, so they begin it again:

Samedi après-midi, Madame-là tombait malade ...

It is Saturday afternoon; and if I had fainted in my bath I could have drowned, I could have died, and those girls wouldn't have been in the least concerned, thinks Madame-là anxiously. She is envious of them, because they have each other for gay company. Now they are advancing on the lonely house, using their bouquet to shoo before them a brown hen with well-clipped wings. This is the pullet, which had the temerity, in the middle of a sweltering West Indian summer, to lay one egg in a secret place and hatch out a solitary cream-coloured chicken.

The girls drive the hen, the hen cups the chick with her shortened wings, all rush in a giggling, clucking posse towards the kitchen steps, under which the hen and chicken disappear. Something about the hen and chick has a secret power of mirth over the girls: they sit on the bottom step, laps full of roses and arms round each other's necks, laughing fecklessly.

Madame-là has her own method of attracting attention: she leans out of the window with a small brass bell suspended on a string, and tinkles it above the white-capped heads.

"Melta! Ariadne! Don't forget Mr Whitborough is coming to dinner!"

"Yes, Mistress," says Melta in her deep, harsh contralto. "We forget ourselves. The hen makes us laugh."

But they are speaking to an empty window: Madame-là has slipped downstairs to greet them on the landing. She wants to know what there is about the hen ...

About the hen? Ariadne starts to laugh again. It is really intolerable. At last Melta says: "It is the hen and her child."

"The hen and her child is like ourselves," says Ariadne, rising to full copper height.

Melta is engaged in slicing off the rose stems, for all the world as if she is going to stuff Mr Whitborough's avocado pears with the trimmings. Madame-là notices how pretty both girls are, and that Ariadne is the one with the crisp, scornful upper lip.

"She takes pride in her chick, which is of a lighter complexion than herself," volunteers Melta.

"Just as we do," says Ariadne. They both laugh again, to see the amazement and appeal on Madame-là's face. It is giving them great pleasure to satisfy her curiosity tormentingly, bit by bit.

"I have a daughter, of very pale coloration," says Ariadne. "It is a girl. She is name Dolores."

"I also have a child, a boy name Ah-but-not. He is even so light as Adne's child, and born in the same month," says Melta.

"And how old are these children?" asks Madame-là, sounding lost. When she says the word "children" she looks wonderingly at their continuing childish arabesque against a background of roses.

"Two years at Epiphany," says Melta, and Ariadne echoes, "E-pi-phany."

"But where are they?"

"Where?" ask the girls together, astonished. "With our mothers in the country, Mistress, naturally."

Ariadne declares, "We were raised up as neighbours. We do everything together."

Madame-là makes an effort, and collects herself. "You must bring the children to see me."

"Yes, Mistress." They undulate evasively.

"But don't forget the dinner. Perhaps I could arrange the roses, to save time?"

Melta lays down the stems reproachfully. To create a diversion, Ariadne exclaims with cunning: "I can hear the Master's step, Mistress."

So Madame-là goes back upstairs and finds that Rodney indeed stands, steaming with recent energetic action, on the upstairs veranda. A strange redness overlays his sun-browned face. "Have you been playing tennis?" she asks him.

"No, darling," says Rodney, turning his back to reveal that his shirt is torn to shreds. "I've been fighting."

All her life she has been wanting Rodney to be successful and masterful, and now she is not sure that success really suits him. Is he, after all, getting too tough?

"With the skipper of the Douce Hélène," he answers her question tersely.

"Oh Rodney! That poor black man!"

"He nearly made me two thousand pounds poorer, by tipping our new engine into the sea. I had practically to stun him to get it eased back into the boat until we could land it."

She is silent, envisaging the horrid scene, a large lump of tangled steel perilously rocking, and Rodney springing at the skipper's gleaming torso. But Rodney appears unconcerned: he removes his shredded shirt and makes for the bathroom.

To soothe him further, she calls through the...